The resignation of Claudine Gay is not a blow to DEI. She wasn’t made to resign over DEI. Her resignation is a blow to plagiarism and yay. But nobody dared to openly criticize her DEI beliefs and policies. To the contrary, the fear of saying a word against DEI is such that the protestations of how this is all solely about plagiarism became quite shrill.

DEI is this country’s sacred cow. If at least some of the effort that went into tracing Gay’s plagiarism has gone into tracking her DEI policies, we’d uncover some interesting information. The only analysis of Gay’s connections with the Pritzker family and how they used her DEI sloganeering to cover for their corruption that I saw came from a mega-woke guy who was upset that Gay is too conservative.

Actual conservatives, though, dropped the ball. They got rid of an individual but made not a dent to the edifice of lies and oppression that is DEI. The anti-Gay battle helped me and you not a whit. My school is still as DEI as ever. And so is every school. And a growing number of workplaces.

Do you know what system of beliefs posits that every problem stems from personal failures of specific individuals?

Exactly.

We’ve been stuck on Gay’s personal failures – and they are big, absolutely – and completely lost sight of the actual problem. It’s constantly “if only we get rid of Trump / Biden / Putin, etc”. And it’s all a soothing fantasy because none of what really ails us is about any specific person. The overinflated importance of Trump who didn’t really do much, either good or bad. The overinflated importance of Putin who’s a scared old man trying to not be killed by his enraged population. The overinflated importance of Biden who is repeating Trump’s policies on a loop because he can’t come up with anything new.

We have solvable problems. It’s all very solvable. But we can’t solve them from the mentality that caused them to begin with. We had a great opportunity with these university presidents, and instead it was turned into a personal vendetta over one boring, unimportant individual.

Let this at least be a lesson for the future.

Neoliberalism rewards immaturity, so people self-infantilize to the role of eternal adolescents in search of a savior.

Immaturity signals pliability. Adolescents are in the process of becoming, and it’s always uncertain how they will turn out. A society of perennially immature people is easy to control.

This is from the second chapter of the new book.

I’d think the reviewer was taking the piss, to be honest. Adults normally don’t require this level of gushing. Even my second grader would be weirded out if I reacted like this to a project of hers.

I started the year going all out on physical and psychological health. I’ve never lived as healthily as in these 4 years.

In return, my brain regaled me with atrocious nightmares. Really bad nightmares, when for me. There’s a lot of raw meat in them. I carry it everywhere and then eat it.

That’s what I get for living a healthy lifestyle.

My brain is a bastard.

The reason why the war in Ukraine isn’t moving in the right direction is that the US is still forbidding any strikes on the Russian territory. Russians put their missiles two miles away from the Ukrainian border and bomb peaceful cities. It would be so easy for Ukrainians to strike these missile ranges and destroy them before they can do any damage. But the US is forbidding it.

Why?

Because “this would slow walk us into WW3.”

Russia has sicced Hamas on Israel. Belarus now has nukes. Iran and North Korea have joined the war. None of this is “walking us into WW3.” But stopping all that two years ago would.

Yes, complete idiots sounds about right. To allow Russia, North Korea and Iran jointly to wage war in Europe is truly moronic behavior.

As I keep saying, the two most recent administrations are nearly identical.

Let the pouting begin.

Among Ukrainians, our nickname for The New York Times is “New Ork Times.” We call Russians “orcs”, and it’s a way of mocking NYTimes for their pro-Russian bent.

And now she’ll finally write a book about her persecution by a racist mob. She’ll be able to out-Kendi every DiAngelo.

We should all lose this way.

The massive missile strikes have been hard to process, and I’m struggling. So I decided to start the year with a very light read by an extremely young writer. The Real Deal is about a reality TV show modeled on the one with the fat dance teacher and a group of little girls. Does anybody remember the name?

In any case, the book is very cute, very entertaining. Reality TV drama is all here, and it’s as overwrought and fake as ever. The author has an aggravating habit of saying “I was sat” and “I was stood” instead of “I was sitting” and “I was standing” but the story is enjoyable and reads easily.

The problem with the book is that, as I said, Caitlin Devlin is very young. I Googled her, and she’s a child. Aside from vague wokeness, she doesn’t have a point of view. As a result, she has no idea where to take her story or what to think of the characters. The novel has no ending, and a good, fun plot falls apart in a meandering, directionless collection of platitudes.

As I always say, life is unfair. Some of us have a point of view and a half but no imagination to create a story. Others can create great stories but have no intellect to fill them with meaning. Devlin still can develop in some direction, so I wouldn’t give up on her.

Nice book, entertaining but the last 30 pages a deeply boring.